“Oh, The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends!”

  We sit right between Pesach and Shavuot and I want to go back to something about Pesach I failed to mention. But inasmuch as this week’s sedra, Emor, discusses the festivals of which Pesach is one, it’s appropriate.

   There are actually two festivals connected with one celebration. In the same verses of the Torah, in the Book of Leviticus, we read about a Feast of Matzoth and a Feast of Pesach, unleavened bread and lambs. Later in our history they merged; the symbols of both can be found on our seder plates…namely, the squares of matzah and the lamb bone.

   You know how I came to understand what this celebratory division was all about? Having starred as “Curly” in Oklahoma! (Just an off-Broadway production…V E R Y off-Broadway, in fact so “off” that it was in our URJ camp in the Berkshires). Now what does Oklahoma! have to do with Passover? 

   Do you know the song, “The Farmer and the Cowman”? Well, the full line of that is “Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.” Historically, the two were not friends. The farmer was sedentary and planted crops; the cowman roamed, often with herds of cattle that ate the farmer’s crops. But they both had festivals in the springtime of the year, festivals focusing on the birth of animals and on the growth and harvest of crops. After a while two parallel celebrations joined together: the Feasts of Matzot and Pesach. Of course, with respect to the name, Pesach won out, but with respect to how we celebrate in these days, matzah is the victor.  

   Having minored in Cultural Anthropology with superb professors, my focus on a great deal of Judaism rests on what I learned in those classes. And I carry that especially in my understanding of holidays and festivals. It’s no coincidence that so many similarities exist in Passover and Easter; no surprise that the same is true in Chanukah and Christmas. We might have split over theology, but we didn’t completely split in other areas. The cowman and the farmer weren’t friends in the days of our ancestors, and they weren’t friends on the plains of Oklahoma.